Posts Tagged ‘Dreampainters’

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Released 4 years ago, the palindromic Anna was an interesting idea marred by poor execution: an Amnesia-like set in a single environment that begs to be explored in-depth, it was held back – Adam thought – by a lack of interesting stuff to see and do in those spaces.

Still, devs Dreampainters have shown a laudable commitment to listen to feedback: first, they patched at least a few of Anna’s issues, both technical and gameplay-related. And now, some of Adam’s criticisms are being addressed head-on in their new White Heaven [official site], a horror adventure with greater emphasis on survival elements.

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Just as experiences of bad customer service travel faster than a speeding Usain bullet, games that are released in a problematic state are spoken of far and wide. It’s all too easy to ignore the positive response to such issues so here’s an acknowledgement that Dreampainters, whose debut release is the horror adventure Anna, are listening to feedback. Although a patch isn’t going to fix all of my criticisms of the game, the first update does address lots of technical issues and shows a commitment to improving the quality of the puzzles as well. Full changelog below.

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Anna, with its single location, reactive horror elements and folklore-based story, seemed like it could be the game to scratch a lot of my itches. After playing through twice, to see how different the scares and the conclusions might be, I’m ready to share wot I think. Am I itch-free or have I got sixteen layers of my own skin sloughed up under my fingernails?

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Anna caught my eye the first time I saw her. A sun-dappled beauty with a spooky and melancholy soul who would allow me to interact in ways far more interesting than the usual pointing and clicking. With an intricately detailed central location and a plot that apparently changes based on the player’s actions, Anna could bring smarts and sensitivity along with fear and trembling. It’s available on Desura now for £6.99 and I hope to take a look soon. Here’s a trailer for your eyes.

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Sunny yet sinister adventure Anna takes place in and around one of the most impressively realised houses I’ve ever seen in a game and, as I’ve previously noted, it also has at least one exquisite rock in it. A new video shows that bags of cement are rendered with equal care. This footage isn’t about the visuals though, it’s about mood, atmosphere and music. Horror doesn’t necessarily mean angry industrial scrapings and clankings, it can also be the child of melancholy and soundtracked as such.

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Craig espied Anna just a few weeks ago, cheekily comparing it to Amnesia even before he’d seen it in motion. Now that the first in-game footage has been released, the whole world can accept that he was right to do so, although only partly. Anna seems to have a similar approach to interaction with the world but it also has sunlight. In a horror game! Outrageous. Be outraged below.

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Actually, no! Don’t forget Amnesia! I’m only saying that for title fun. Remember Amnesia, or when I tie Anna into the creepy first-person adventure genre it won’t make any sense. I’ve cleverly shot myself in my own foot, here. Nothing left to do but bloodily drag the appendage around, wailing at my own cleverosity. Are you remembering? Phew. So Dreampainter’s Anna is set in and around a haunted Italian sawmill. It’s an adventure game, so there’s a fair amount of plucking things from the prettily-rendered environments, combining, jiggling, discarding, using the mouse pointer as you would a hand, pulling open drawers, etc. It has all the basic verbs of the adventure genre, and a few clever twists. It’s a bit like Amnesia, wink wink.